Bots of this type have appeared recently, and people are asking if it's okay to use them. I'm not sure about this either, so I think it would make sense to ask users.
These bots follow some subreddits on Reddit and automatically post it to Lemmy when a post is created there.
I've seen an example site for it: lemmit.online. This instance is dedicated solely to mirroring Reddit posts to the Lemmy instance.
Maybe instead of mirroring to a community on Lemmy NSFW, we can subscribe to lemmit.online via Lemmy NSFW. This way we could have kept Lemmy NSFW free of bots. Currently, even if accepted, I believe it should be done under admin control to prevent duplicates.
Categorically no. The point of lemmy isn't to be a content farm. It's to be a community where people respect each other. How can you respect anything or anyone while stealing content?
In fact I would go the other way and start banning people that are posting content they don't explicitly have permission to post. In this day and age where more people are seeking to monetize sharing nudes, we need to protect the few free content creators we have left, whether on this platform or the former one.
That's a fair point but what about artwork? For example hentai. Are we really expecting only OC content to appear on Lemmy? I don't think that's realistic at all..
I would argue that we're no more entitled to post people's hentai artwork as we are their nudes. More so in fact, it can take days to create hentai, only for it to be posted here with no mechanism for the original author to request it taken down.
If people really want to see other people's hentai posted here, why not link to it? I'm pretty sure the original authors would appreciate that. Plus if they see Lemmy generating traffic, maybe they'll join up and post stuff here directly.
from a 'get as much content as possible' angle bots are good but i think there's a big risk of them drowning out actual posters which really takes away a lot of the fun of posting and making it feel like an archive rather than an active community.
I am voting a no, and have been blocking bots whenever I see them.
I understand trying to jumpstart communities, however I feel bots should be limited to 1 post every 6-12 hours if allowed at all. And honestly, I think bots reduce the quality of a community regardless, especially if you are basing it off metrics on Reddit, where the top posts in many subreddits aren't necessarily the the nicest pictures, just the ones with the most professional setup and money to burn on bots upvoting them for exposure.